This may be the week for celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah but there’s no holiday on the business side of the media business.

Last week, Lee Enterprises, parent company of the Arizona Daily Star, said it had to postpone filing its annual report — but will do so by Dec. 29 — as it faced yet another issue with lenders that could lead to default on its debt.

It’s almost as if someone has it in for Lee Enterprises. At one point last week it was possible to buy shares of Lee for 33 cents each. Think about it, you could buy two shares for less than the 75-cent newstand price of the daily newspaper. That represents a stunning 98 percent drop in the share price from its 52-week high of $15.97.

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Less than two months ago, Lee Enterprises renegotiated some debt terms that included eliminating shareholder dividends and giving up some of its available revolving credit. It also agreed to to pay higher interest in exchange for allowing debt to go as high as 6.75 times cash flow.

As the reason for delaying its annual report, the company said it needed time to calculate more write-downs on the value of assets such as goodwill and intangibles. Those write-downs will total at least $180 million for the quarter ending Sept. 28.

So far this year, Lee Enterprises has written down 56 percent of the asset value it carries on its books for its half of the Tucson operations, from $166.7 million to $73.3  million. The write-downs mainly affect stockholders’ equity in the company and not the cash-flow from operations.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Lee Enterprises said that without additional write-downs its independent accounting firm, KPMG, said the company would be at risk of defaulting on a $306 million debt and would have to “include an explanatory paragraph relating to Lee’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

The debt in question was originated in 2000 by Pulitzer Publishing Co. for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Lee Enterprises acquired all of Pulitzer Publishing Co., including the Star, in June 2005 for $1.46 billion.

In a statement, Mary Junck, chairman and CEO of Lee Enterprises, said “Although the credit markets remain very difficult, lenders have shown a willingness to work toward acceptable solutions to help us avoid violating performance conditions in our debt agreements. Even in this recession, Lee continues to generate substantial cash flow, and we continue to believe that Lee will emerge strong when all the national economic turbulence ends.”

For the fourth quarter, Lee Enterprises said its net income was down 73 percent to $5.4 million from revenues that were down 13 percent to $244.9 million. Besides the Star and the Post-Dispatch, Lee owns 47 other daily newspapers and more than 300 other publications. The company is headquartered in Davenport, Iowa.

KOLD layoffs

More media layoffs: KOLD 13 reduced its staff by 7.2 percent, when five full-timers and some part-timers had their positions terminated Dec. 9. Judging from accounts from other markets, the layoffs were among similar cutbacks that took place at Raycom Media stations across the country.

“Tucson and Arizona are in a tough situation and so are many of the state’s media outlets,” according to a statement from Jim Arnold, vice president and general manager. “I wish KOLD were immune to these circumstances. These cuts are personally painful and were only made to allow us to meet our business obligations and done in such a way to minimize the impact of our on-air product and service to Southern Arizona.”

No on-air positions were eliminated but otherwise the layoffs were across all departments. Arnold said he didn’t anticipate any further reductions.

Privately held, Raycom Media is headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., and operates 46 TV stations. KOLD and two stations in Honolulu are its western-most stations. Most of its stations are in the southeastern United States.

Rosenberg mum on plans

Steve Rosenberg, former publisher of Tucson Lifestyle magazine, sent me an e-mail after I had written about his plans to launch a new glossy business magazine for Tucson. He wrote that he’s still fine- tuning some things and would rather wait to talk about it until the first issue comes out in March. But he also wrote that it’s not uncommon for major metropolitan areas to have both a regional business publication such as Inside Tucson Business and a glossy business magazine.

Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237. Inside Tucson Media appears weekly.